Flannery O’Connor <3 1950s.

Flannery O’Connor really loved the 1950s. So much in fact that she placed characters of the 1950s and twisted them into more grounded characters. O’Connor lived in an era of “Leave It To Beaver,” where American optimism was at its finest, after winning the second World War and having a surging economy.

In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” O’Conner puts a hearty family on a round trip with a grandmother. In “The Artificial Nigger,” O’Conner has a grandfather teaching his grandson a life lesson. These are the moral values of the 1950s.

Except that the grandmother provokes the death of her family. And the grandfather is a blatant racist.

But this is where I assume O’Conner has fun. She places characters she is commonly bombarded with, and puts them in situations that are—for lack of a better adage—out of character. Perhaps O’Conner did not see the 1950s as optimistically as her contemporaries did.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. O’Conner imitated the 1950s that she witnessed.